The Rallye Automobile Monte Carlo takes place this weekend and that can mean only one thing - the start of the 2007
FIA World Rally Championship.
Just 46 days following the end of the 2006 season, the new season is already upon us. The event is the oldest, most prestigious and glamorous on the calendar and this year it celebrates it 75th anniversary. To commemorate that the organisers have revised the route and it now includes some classic special stages which have not been used for many years.
For the first time the rally is based in Valence, near the river Rhone in south-east France, and most of the asphalt stages will take place on roads in the mountainous Ardeche and Vercors regions, which hosted some of the most famous Monte Carlo stages in the past.
Special notes:
The inland special stages are away from the warming coastal influence experienced in the traditional tests in the Alps above Monaco, home to the event in recent years. Temperatures may dip lower at night and take longer to warm up in the day. Although recent weather has been mild, the forecast arrival of a cold snap next week may bring patchy snow and ice on the bleak and inhospitable higher sections of the rally.
Essentially an asphalt event on technically straight-forward roads, unpredictable weather can make Rallye Monte Carlo hugely difficult. Drivers can face bone dry roads, streaming wet asphalt and treacherous ice – always with the threat of snow on the highest ground. They can often encounter all on the same stage as the route climbs and descends mountain cols, switching from southern facing roads sheltered from the extreme weather to exposed northern ones.
